Lead Me Home
by bravevulnerability
Summary: 'It's been ongoing for the last few days – the restlessness, the nightmares, the sounds that crawl from his lips and crack her heart open more each night. But she doesn't think it's ever been this bad.' Episode insert for 7x20, Sleeper, with a minor twist on Rick's dream and the consequences that follow.


The soft, keening noises from the man at her side pull her from the deep sleep she had managed to fall into, the broken whimpers filling the bedroom abolishing the lingering vestiges of slumber clouding her eyes. Kate lifts on her elbow and places a gentle hand on Castle's shoulder, already able to feel the trembles that wrack his frame and the sweat soaking through his t-shirt.

"Rick," she rasps, curling her fingers at his bicep, but the muscle flexes harder under her touch, his body tensing. "Castle, wake up."

The whimpers turn to a groan, pained and distressed, his body shifting restlessly beneath her touch. It's been ongoing for the last few days – the restlessness, the nightmares, the sounds that crawl from his lips and crack her heart open more each night. She knows what it's like, knows the agony of being tortured by your own mind, and she yearns to help him somehow, but by morning, he'll pretend the dreams never happened.

She would never begrudge him of his coping mechanism, especially not after her own consisted of hiding away for three months, but she can't continue to watch him suffer like this every night either.

"No, no," he moans, his hand jerking from beneath the pillow his fingers have been throttling for the past week. "No, Kate - not you."

It's the first time her name has been tangled in the slur of cries and grunts that stumble out of his mouth each night and her brow furrows. She's assumed that whatever dream that claims his mind is reoccurring, revolving around his disappearance; she's woken to shouts and gasps, murmurs of protest and choked exclamations about things she couldn't decipher, but never her name.

"Castle," she tries again, urgent this time, shaking him a little as she sits up in the bed, hovering over his side to gain a glance at his face. His eyes flicker in rapid succession beneath their lids, his brow knit and glistening with sweat in the moonlit darkness of their bedroom.

She doesn't think it's ever been this bad.

"Castle, please-"

"Not again," he chokes out, his mouth crumpling around the words, her heart breaking as she finally manages to ease him onto his back and place a hand to his fevered cheek. "Beckett-"

His own sob startles him awake, panicked blue eyes flaring open to land on her, roaming greedily along her face while his chest still heaves.

"Kate," he gasps around a swallow, blinking as she brushes her thumb to the corner of his eye, wiping away the moisture trickling there.

"It was just a dream," she promises him, combing back the dampened piece of hair that's plastered to his forehead. Castle pushes up on his elbows, though, up until he can maneuver himself into a sitting position, and then he's hooking an arm around her neck, gentle but desperate as he draws her in close.

Kate doesn't attempt to stop him, bracing her hands at his ribcage, feeling the harsh pound of his heart thudding too fast, crashing into the bones. She expects an embrace, expects the press of his face to her neck, expects him to hide there for a while before he coaxes her back down to lie with him beneath the sheets until his breathing steadies or abandons her to suffer through the final traces of his nightmare alone in the shower.

She doesn't expect his arm to unwind from around her neck, for his hand to trail down to the vee of her t-shirt and gently tug until the healed scar between her breasts is visible.

His sigh of relief is audible as his fingers dust over the raised flesh, stroking it with familiar reverence.

"You dreamt of my shooting?" she murmurs into the silence, covering the hand splayed protectively over her heart.

He nods, his eyes trained on their hands, refusing to meet hers. He's had nightmares about her shooting before, woken clutching for her in the darkness, sometimes needing nothing more than a glimpse of her to be reassured, but other times he's done exactly as he had tonight. He'd sought affirmation in the fading scar on her chest.

"Do… do you want to talk about it?" she asks softly, hopeful, but he shakes his head as soon as the question is out, slides his hand from beneath hers to rub at his eyes. "Castle-"

"I need a quick shower," he rasps, but he reeks of grief. It drains from his pores and scrapes through his voice, but he shakes his head again, squeezes her shoulder as he slips out of the bed, away from her, and escapes to the bathroom, leaves her with nothing but questions and a pillow stained in his tears.

* * *

Blood. The man on the floor is bleeding, the sticky red liquid oozing from the gunshot wound in his stomach. He tries to help him, to staunch the blood flow, but it continues to stream out thick and crimson, coating his fingers.

_Castle._

Rick jerks, searching the shed for the whisper of her voice that he swore he heard, but the man groans again in agony beneath him, his eyes rolling back, and Castle attempts to cover the wound again, adding more pressure. But when he glances back down, it's Kate.

"Castle," she gasps, her eyes black and stricken, her pupils blown with horror - that same scared, panicked look that has been ingrained in his memory for the last three and a half years.

The grey, concrete flooring of the shed shifts, changing colors, morphing into blades of thick, green grass. The trees of the jungle disintegrate, a cloudless blue sky taking their place, the heat of the sun coming out to beat down on his back, just like it had when-

_Beckett's down._

The shouting replaces the previous soundtrack of combat, of gunshots whizzing through the air, the familiar screams of shock and terror drawing him into a new place, an older memory - a dream that had once played on repeat for an entire summer. But this feels all too real.

She whimpers his name again, the blood seeping out of her chest, drenching her uniform and staining the grass, and oh no, _no_, not again. He can't watch her die again.

"No, Kate," he begs, kneeling over her, sealing his palm over the bullet wound. He can save her this time, he'll save her, he can-

The life in her eyes begin to fade, lashes fluttering and threatening to fall shut, and he presses down harder on the hole in her chest. But the blood doesn't stop, his efforts fruitless as it flows like a river, a puddle of crimson surrounding them in the grass.

"Kate, you can't - don't leave me. Can't leave me again."

"Castle, please," she expels on her last breath and then her eyes are rolling back, her head lolling to the side, slipping away from him all over again.

A sob breaches his lips, his hand clutching her limp shoulder, and then he's spinning, the world crumpling around him, but he can't leave her.

"Beckett-"

His eyes flash open and the spinning has stopped, his world stable again even as his heart beats hard enough to have his vision shaking. But despite the unsteadiness of his sight, he can still see her clearly, leaning over him with concern pouring from her eyes and the warm weight of her hand on his face, anchoring him.

"It was just a dream," he hears her assure him while her thumb caresses the corner of his eye, but his heart won't stop drumming in his chest and his lungs just can't seem to expand wide enough to retain the gulps of air he's sucking in.

It's bad enough to endure the endless cycle of broken memories every night. He can't handle watching her die too.

* * *

He hadn't planned to tell Dr. Burke about Kate's appearance in his dream. It wasn't hard to figure out why she had wound up in the visions, her voice penetrating through his subconscious during her attempts to pull him from the dreams, giving her a role in the screwed up memories.

The therapy session with Burke had been set up to decipher the dreams he had been having throughout the week and there was no reason to drag her into it, but while Burke is walking him through his first round of hypnotherapy, he fails to stop the narrative when he comes to the point in last night's altered version of the dream where Kate's body appears in substitute for the man who had been dying beneath his hands.

"Kate - she's not supposed to be there," he groans quietly, burying his face in his hands.

"Kate makes an appearance in this dream?" Burke inquires, calm but curious, and Castle shakes his head.

"No, she never does, but last night - she was trying to wake me up while I was in the middle of it, and it-"

Her dead eyes flash behind his.

"Mr. Castle?"

Rick presses his knuckles to his eye sockets, silently pleads for the starbursts of color to eliminate the vision of her dying, but the slideshow won't stop. The absurd memories and Kate's shooting merge together like a whirlwind in his mind and he can't breathe. Can't stop seeing her dead, can't stop seeing the blood all over his hands-

"Kate-"

Cool air skims his neck, drying the sweat there, making the dizziness intensify. A door opens, shuts, and he jerks, digs his elbows in harder at his knees, bone piercing bone, as his eyes start to ache from the pressure of his knuckles.

She's dying, she's dying again, and he can't get to her because he's gone, disappeared for two months and doesn't even know where he is or how or why-

"_Castle_." Her fingers coil around his wrists, drawing his hands away from his face, and he's forced to open his eyes, the glare of light streaming in from the floor to ceiling windows momentarily blinding. "Castle, breathe for me."

He automatically sucks in a breath upon command as the white spots disappear from his vision, making room for the sight of her crouched in front of him, wedged between his bent knees with her hair falling in a curtain around her face.

Alive. Concerned, a little scared even as her eyes examine his face, but she's still alive.

Her thumbs soothe at his wrists, circling over the points of his pulse until he can match her steady rhythm with his breath, until he no longer feels as if he's going to suffocate.

Burke appears alongside her then, offering up a glass of water over Kate's shoulder.

"Thank you," he croaks when Kate releases one of his wrists so he can accept the water, but she doesn't move, remaining in his line of sight, and he's so stupidly grateful.

Castle takes a long sip of the ice water, revels in the shock of cold down his throat and through his chest, allows the ice to spread and ground him in reality.

"What – what exactly happened?"

"From the looks of it, you started spiraling into a panic attack," Burke explains, returning to his seat across from Castle, and Kate finally shifts to his side, sliding her hand from the inside of his wrist to twine their fingers as she settles next to him on the couch. "The therapy was going well, your recounting of the images you saw in your dreams steady, but I think the stress of these dreams, the need to know the truth behind your disappearance, combined with the trauma of seeing Kate shot again, was too much for your psyche."

"So I had a mental break?" he summarizes, hating that Kate is here to listen to all of this, that she finally knows just how bad the nightmares have really become and the effect they have over him.

He was never actually trying to hide the severity of it from her, it's just… everything is perfect. Was perfect. Like he expressed to her earlier this morning, things have been going so well for them lately and he so badly wanted to avoid tainting their lives with the grief of those two months again. He's not the only one who still struggles with it, dreams about it. Every once in a while, it's Kate who wakes them both with muffled sobs, with hands that reach for his side of the bed and snag in his t-shirt, searching for him. She spent so long searching for him and the torment of those two months still haunts her, causes her just as much anguish as it does him.

The last thing he wanted to do was add to that when their lives have been flowing so smoothly.

"A small one, yes," Burke confirms with a nod. "I realize our sessions are confidential, but you continued to call for Kate, so I pulled her in from the waiting room."

"No, I'm glad you did," Castle murmurs when he registers that the man's explanation holds a hint of apology. "The piece of the dream where she dies… I've had that before, before the disappearance, and it helps when she's - when I can reaffirm that it isn't real."

Kate's fingers tighten in his, but she remains a pillar of strength at his side, silent but supportive, willing to stand with him through it all. It almost causes him to wish he had confided in her sooner.

Burke nods, a touch of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. "Well, this was a very productive first session, Mr. Castle, but I'm afraid our time is up."

"Of course," Castle answers, taking one last, long sip of the chilled water before placing it on the mahogany coffee table between them and rising with Kate's hand still in his. "Thank you. But Dr. Burke… could I, uh, see you again tomorrow?"

"I'll check, but I want you to think about the underlying meaning of the dream," Burke informs him, like a teacher giving homework, but for once, Rick doesn't mind it, almost eager to tackle the assignment. "And don't assume that the images are actually memories."

Castle nods, even though his mind is already arguing against the doctor's words, and follows when Kate starts for the door.

"Good to see you as well, Kate," Dr. Burke adds with another small, gracious smile that his wife returns.

"You too, Dr. Burke. Thank you for everything."

Kate's statement is heavy with gratitude for so much more than what occurred here today, enough to have Castle's curiosity piqued and buzzing with questions about past visits that he doesn't dare ask about, but Burke merely nods, kind but solemn in his reply.

"You okay?" she asks when the door to her – well, _their _therapist's office clicks shut behind them and Castle sighs, tries to string up a smile for her, but she knows. She always knows when it's strained.

"I just want this behind us," he confesses, absentmindedly stroking the back of her thumb.

"I know," Kate murmurs, drifting in closer and lifting her unclaimed hand to his jaw, letting him rest in the warmth of her palm for a moment. "We'll figure this out, Castle. You'll find the truth eventually, but in the meantime, I have your back, okay? Wherever this leads, I'm with you."

He knows they should go, stop lingering outside Burke's office where anyone could walk by, but he spares an extra minute to slip his arms around her waist, to hold her close and murmur his own gratitude into the cove of her neck.

"Just keep me close," she whispers, rubbing at his back, tracing the line of his spine through his shirt with her knuckles. "Every step of the way."

"Of course," he promises, pulling back to offer reassurance in the form of smile that doesn't require much effort. "Always."

Relief spills from her lips and she tilts upwards to kiss him, chaste but firm, before tugging gently on their knotted hands, leading him down the hall towards the elevator.

He'll keep her close, tell her whatever she wants to know rather than deflecting her questions, as long as no form of danger befalls her because of it. She's his partner, his wife, but if the truth behind all of this is worse than it seems, if he ever even discovers what that truth is, he won't risk her safety, her life. He's lost her enough in dreams to last a lifetime. He refuses to allow his nightmares to become reality.


End file.
